


Far From Shore

by Covenmouse, ellorgast



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Mermaids, Senshi & Shitennou Mini Bang 2019, creepy dark mermaids, horror romance, monster girl ami, sort of a reverse shape of water situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 10:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21297707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/pseuds/Covenmouse, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: Zac Felde (Zoisite) tried to rescue a girl he thought was drowning in the ocean. That was his first mistake.A creepy mermaid gothic horror romance featuring Ami and Zoisite.
Relationships: Mizuno Ami/Zoisite
Comments: 17
Kudos: 33
Collections: Senshi & Shitennou Reverse Mini Bang 2019





	Far From Shore

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the ocean-themed [Senshi & Shitennou Reverse Mini Bang 2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SSRevMB_2019). Thank you to my absolutely amazing artist Covenmouse for letting me go nuts with this story based on her gorgeous art. Find Covenmouse on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Junkyard_King) and [Tumblr](https://azureliongoddess.tumblr.com/).

I must say, Dr. Chiba, that your letter caught me by surprise. There is a specificity to your inquiry that leads me to believe that this is not some ill-conceived prank, or the prattling of a crackpot fan. Yours would not be the first letter to suggest the existence of some creature of folklore in my life, but it is certainly the first I have received with the return address of the Tokyo Medical University Hospital. Should I be honored that someone of your esteem has deigned to analyze the lyrics of this humble musician's song? 

It is true that some years ago, I wrote a song about a girl who rose from the ocean and nearly dragged me down with her. Most assume that is a metaphor. People write songs about plenty of things that they have never experienced. I wonder if Frank Sinatra ever fielded inquiries about space flight. And yet, you sound so very certain in your letter that there is some element of truth to the words. Almost as though the encounter I describe matches one you have heard of before. 

This is not a story I have shared before. Who could I tell, after all, without becoming another one of those eccentric celebrities that the tabloids love to paint as unhinged? 

It is not, I must warn you, a pleasant story. This is no fairy tale to read to your children after dark. I can only assume that it is a fascination for the morbid that drives you to ask about this. 

I was young at the time of this story. It was summer. I was a college dropout with too much romance in my heart and too many blank sheets in my music book. I lived alone on an empty corner of the world, and that is important to remember as you read this. I was alone, save for her.

I met her, as you already know, on the ocean. 

It was her eyes that should have warned me. They were not frantic, not panic-stricken as the eyes of one so near to death should have been. There was something calming about them when she looked up at me. Calm and tranquil as the sea on a windless morning. The reassurances I had been shouting to her died on my lips, drowned in those eyes as surely as she should have done in the sea itself. Her black hair was plastered in long black streams over her pale face, and floated as a black oil slick around her submerged form. 

When I had seen her from the rocky shore, she had been all thrashing limbs and a head bobbing in and out of the water. She was no longer thrashing now, as I drew my boat closer to her. Indeed, her stillness -- the way that the very waves seemed to turn gentle around her form, seemed to shift subtly with her -- should have struck me then. But I was bent on my task of rowing out to her, and keeping the little boat straight in the surging waves. 

She did not reach immediately for me. I took this for reticence, for fear, for her limbs growing too tired and numb in that too-cold water. It was I who reached out first, who naively offered my hand and, when she did not immediately take it, stretched perilously over the water to reach further. She seemed such a petite thing. Surely I had the strength to draw her up.

  
[ ](https://66.media.tumblr.com/7abb0006190dd402d5dc387e00865910/a65b57021e0db94e-0a/s1280x1920/ef8e90b1130116eb31a390c2884836c31751f330.png)

Her hand was like ice when it clasped around mine. I pulled.

She pulled harder. 

The air rushed from my lungs as I plunged into the water. The waves were crushing--but it was not the waves. It was not the water that dragged me down beneath the surface. Black oil slick hair floated at the edges of my vision. Icy hands pinned my wrists in a bruising grasp. Something like thick rope coiled around my leg. 

I was going to die. I was certain of it. 

I do not know why I fought anyway. Perhaps I had no reason to be fearful, after accepting that.

I twisted like a cat in her grasp. I kicked at the thing winding around my ankle. Fruitlessly, for it only wound tighter. I jammed the heel of my other shoe into its flesh, and that bought me a reaction. What I thought had been rope loosened and slid away. 

Too soon did I hope that my freedom was near. Suddenly a crushing weight closed around my ribs. Something nearly as thick as my own torso, red-black beneath the water, shimmering in what little light remained. Clumsily, I tried to push it away with my hand, but its strength was beyond me. 

I could feel her icy torso pressed against my back. Her face in the nape of my neck. My struggles were growing weaker, and she sensed that her prey was in hand. Sharp teeth gently grazed my throat.

The surface was drifting beyond my reach. The bright blue sky, shattered by a thousand tiny ripples. The shadow of my boat, already being pushed by the waves toward the rocky shore. Would it be found? Would it wash up somewhere, offer some hint as to my end? Or would it, too, be lost at sea, and leave my death a mystery to never be solved?

Her hands were around my chest now, something like claws hooking into my flesh. My own hands, no longer restrained, reached around the great thing around my ribs to fumble at my pockets. I had been outside when I saw her, working on repairing a faulty wire box. Did I dare to hope that I had pocketed the tool when I rushed to her aid?

Something hard and metallic fell into my hand. Immediately, I drove the screwdriver as hard as I could into the beast's scaly flesh. 

The scream was piercing. My vision went black as the reverberations shuddered through me. But the creature had recoiled from the strike, and the weight around my ribs, the arms around my chest, all of it was gone. Blindly, I thrashed in the water, no longer aware of where I was, of which direction was up.

It must have been divine intervention that made my hand strike my boat. I found the surface at last and pulled myself up, coughing and choking. My every limb felt numb and useless, and I could scarcely take a full breath, but somehow I managed to get an oar into my trembling hands. 

Collapsed on the boat's floor, gripping the oar in both hands like a child still learning the most basic of skills, I began to sloppily paddle myself back to shore. My vision was returning in a haze by then, and I could make out the little dock ahead. The shore was too rocky to try to steer the boat anywhere else. The wind was picking up suddenly, and the water growing choppy, fighting my efforts. 

A hand shot out of the waves and clamped around my wrist again. I screamed and pulled back, but her iron grip would not release me, drawing her further to the surface. I saw her face rising out of the briny foam, her eyes the same gentle blue, but her teeth like knives. The little boat rocked with her tugging and with the growing turmoil of the sea's churn, and I feared it would soon topple. 

Somehow the oar was still in my hand. I swung it as hard as I could, and felt the blade of it strike true. This time, the creature's shriek was quickly silenced, and her grip upon my arm slipped away, her hand vanishing into the darkness below. 

I do not quite remember how I got to shore. As soon as the creature had broken its hold on me, the sky seemed to split open. Clouds that had not been there before churned in warning overhead, and a deluge quickly began falling. The wind whipped my face, sliced at my skin with raindrops that felt like accusing daggers. 

I think I crawled onto the dock. I do not remember if I even tied the boat off, though losing it would have been disastrous for me. I remember trying to run, and stumbling on the wet rocks, and thunder crackling overhead made the ground beneath me shudder. I remember I was missing a shoe, and I do not know at what point it was lost. I remember my hair falling in my face, wet streams of strawberry blond instead of black. 

When I stumbled through the door of my cabin, I locked the door with trembling fingers, sank onto the kitchen floor, and lay curled into a ball. 

Did I weep? Damn right, I did. Tell me you wouldn't have.

I think I would have remained there for hours, had my alarm not gone off, alerting me of the time.

It was something to focus on. Something other than the taste of blood in my mouth, and the rain pounding the windows. I unfurled myself, still shivering all over. I abandoned my solitary shoe at the door and shuffled through the cabin to the front office, which overlooked the bay I had only just fled. The sea was tumultuous, the waves crashing violently over the rocks. The storm was in full swing now. In vain, I scanned the tides for her dark hair, uncertain of whether it would be better or worse if it were there. 

With dripping wet fingers that trembled so badly I could hardly touch the keys, I painstakingly entered the weather report for the hour. The numbers made no sense--how could a clear blue sky with hardly a breeze turn so rapidly to this roaring storm? I copied them dutifully down, as I had done every three hours, every day, for a month. Then I turned the radio to marine channel 82A, and repeated the conditions aloud. The words did not immediately come, somehow getting lost in the back of my throat, but with some effort I was able to repeat the numbers as dispassionately as I could manage. It was only the weather. Surely I could do this much. 

On that early July evening, nightfall came late. When the lantern flickered to life in the lighthouse over the keeper's cabin, it appeared as barely a smear of illumination through the pouring rain. Not many people realize that lighthouses are all automated these days. Of all the tasks appointed to a lighthouse keeper, lighting it is no longer one of them. 

That night, the building shuddered with the storm in a way that I had never seen. The wind itself was like a beast, trying to pry at the windows and beat against the walls. I went from door to door, from window to window, checking that the locks were secure, that they would not fly open in the next gust. That smaller, icier fingers were not testing the latches. By the time I had made my final weather report for the night, conditions were into warning levels. No ship should have been on the water to hear my report, but I dutifully made it anyway. 

In my manic fear, I had been walking around still clad in only my slowly drying shorts and a hoodie I had thrown over my shoulders to stave off the cold. Now, shut into the cabin with no other tasks before me, I realized I was still shivering. 

As I ran an almost intolerably hot bath, I took stock of the injuries I had not noticed before. Faint bruises around my ribs that hurt with each breath. Scrapes on my hands and arms from pulling myself up into the boat, on my feet and knees from running and stumbling on the rocks. Scratches all over my chest and forearms that rose in hot red welts. 

But it was my throat, where the faintest thin scratches could be seen, that made me shudder. 

I huddled in the tub, not even bothering to wash the salt from my long hair. Just listening to the cabin groan and shake around me. Running my fingers over those barely-visible scratches on my throat. 

I did not sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, it was darkness, and water, and teeth.

My morning alarm found me sitting at the kitchen table, watching the sky lighten with a cold mug of tea in hand. Somehow, the storm had blown itself out. Somehow, the front door had not been pried from its hinges. 

I had spent the night contemplating my choices. Debating whether to call the Coast Guard up for immediate rescue. Whether to quit this job at first light. Perhaps I was not cut out for this lifestyle, after all. But now the cool early light calmly turned its eye upon me, and I found that my fear had burned itself out as the storm did. My harrowing experience could not be repeated, after all. I knew her face, her methods. She would not again catch me alone on the water like that. 

I brewed a new cup of tea, and I went about my day. 

Lighthouse keepers do not light the lamps anymore, but they are not idle. The grounds need constant maintenance, and the machinery is always breaking. I came to this job looking for solitude, but it was my knowledge in engineering that got me in. There was never any shortage of tasks to keep me occupied, and now more than ever I tackled these with fervor. 

If it were not for the numbers I had so dutifully recorded the night before, I might believe the storm, and the terror that preceded it, were merely the products of feverish nightmare. The morning was bright and clear, and faint pale wisps were the only clouds that could be seen. The little garden that I tried to maintain behind the cabin was the only casualty that I could find, some of the lilies and the zucchini crushed by the heavy rain. But as the morning turned warmer, even the dampness soaking the grounds began to evaporate, taking the last traces of that night with it. 

I should have known better. 

The door to the engine room was open. No, it was worse than that. The door, technically, was still there, swinging gently in the warm breeze, but as I drew near, I saw splintered wood. Scratch marks on a broken door frame. The doorknob had been twisted off, left discarded in the grass. 

That, I suspect, is when I should have called the Coast Guard. 

Instead I stood frozen outside the broken door. Out here, it was sunshine and an ocean breeze and the cry of seabirds overhead. Within, it was all darkness, the strange forms of giant engines and generators looming like sleeping beasts. 

You may say that what I did next was irrational, but consider: I was alone on that rock. I received semi-weekly deliveries by boat. If I called in an emergency, it could be hours before help arrived. And my isolation would not be ended tomorrow, or the next night. If I fled the scene and hid in the cabin, what then would I do the next morning, and the one after that? Would I spend every waking moment in terror of being dragged into the deep? 

My hand went to the thin, barely perceptible scratches at my throat. Was it mercy that made those teeth scrape so gently near my artery? Or had the creature merely been playing with its food?

If I quit my job and fled this place now, would I ever find out?

All this to tell you that it was perfectly reasonable for me to reach inside the engine room and flick on the light.

A clatter and a hiss sounded as the industrial lights flickered to life. I stood on the threshold, scanning for movement. Some tools had been knocked from the workbench and lay scattered on the floor. Remembering how well a screwdriver had served me before, I picked up a wrench and began slowly stalking about the room. 

I may have committed every other horror movie blunder within the span of a day, but I can at least reassure you that I did not, at any point, shout "hello?" at the air.

The mind is a complicated thing. In darkness, in times of fear, it perceives every shadow as an unthinkable terror, every breath of wind as a voice of doom. Yet in the day, the unthinkable has no place. The mind makes it into something ordinary, something easily dismissed.

On the floor, extending across the gap between two towering generators, was what appeared to be a thick hose, the likes of which firefighters use. We had no such hoses at the lighthouse. 

I circled carefully around one of the generators, keeping my distance, ready to place it between me and whatever was behind it. Even so, I nearly stepped on the thing that I saw. At least, the end of it. The thin membrane webbing of a fin flared out neatly on the concrete floor. I could see the dust clinging to its edges. And now I could see how long, how impossibly long the body of that tail was, what I thought was a firehose growing larger and larger as it folded and wrapped around itself. 

The rest of her was in shadow, wedged tightly between the wall and the generator. I could see black hair. I could see the glitter of her eyes looking back at me. 

"What are you doing here?" I blurted out, as though she were merely an acquaintance I had stumbled into on the street. As though I had not seen the broken door, or remembered the crush of her tail closing around me.

She continued to stare back at me from her dark crevice, almost unnaturally still. My hand still tightly clutching the wrench, I cautiously took a step over the sprawling tailfin. Just when I had nearly regained steady footing, I heard a dry slither across the concrete floor. 

I jumped so violently at the sound that the wrench made a break for it, clattering uselessly somewhere out of reach. I pressed myself up against the wall, my heart pounding. Somehow, it had not occurred to me that the snakelike tail could _move_. It lazily slid across the floor in a slowly curving S, dragging with it the delicate translucent fin. A shaft of sunlight shone down on it from one of the small windows, and as it moved, I could see that its scales almost shimmered in the sun. 

In that narrow gap between wall and generator, coils of serpentine tail as thick as my own torso shifted around themselves, gathering into ever-tighter knots, winding the rest of itself up until all but the gauzy fringe of fin was tucked into the tiny nook she had claimed. When it had finally settled, I once again saw those dark eyes glittering out at me.

I felt drunk with panic, the engine room spinning around where I stood as flat against the wall as I could get myself. It took a moment for my heart to stop pounding in my ears. Another moment more to realize that the tail had done nothing at all to lash out at me. 

A long, dark trail smeared across the floor, in that same lazy S formation that the tail had taken. It was then that I remembered the screwdriver. "Oh. Are you hurt?"

The creature remained motionless where she was. It was then that I realized what she reminded me of, despite my terror. Once, my sister's black cat had hidden beneath the back porch all day, and it took us hours to coax him out. It was only once he had been brought out, thanks to bribery with bits of chicken, that we found he'd broken his leg. I still remembered peeking into the darkness beneath that porch, those yellow eyes looking stubbornly back at me, as hers did now. 

Was that why she broke in here? Not to hunt me down, but to find respite while she licked her wounds? 

Would it then be best to simply leave her be? But what if she healed up and went back to trying to eat me, or… whatever it is she planned to do? Just as terrifying, what if her injuries grew worse? Would she become more violent from the pain? What if she died from infection? Is that something I actually wanted? 

To get closer to her was unthinkable. To leave her be was unwise. Sometimes stray cats will accept no help, but they will accept food. Perhaps what I needed were bits of chicken.

I backed carefully out of the engine room, watching her the entire time that I did. Her eyes keenly traced my movements. 

The problem was, do sea creatures eat chicken? 

My groceries came, as I have said, through semi-weekly deliveries. I relied on frozen foods and shelf-stable things. That was part of my motivation for keeping a garden, to have more regular access to fresh vegetables. I ate a lot of peanut butter that summer. 

For someone living on the coast, I did not have a lot of fish in my kitchen. I found myself in my pantry, contemplating a can of tuna. Would the creature care whether the tuna was dolphin safe or not? I sighed at the salt content. Surely a wild beast would not recognize this little can as actual food. 

The answer, of course, was literally all around me. I lived on a rock in the ocean. What else was there to do, except find a bucket? 

The rocks below the lighthouse were slick at low tide, but they were also heavily encrusted with pacific oysters and manila clams. I gathered them until the bucket was half full. 

By the time I had returned to the engine room, the daylight had shifted. I could just barely make out her face now, lifting to look at me again as I entered and set the bucket down. I then went to the utility closet and found a large dropcloth, which was well-used and dappled with the same paint that whitewashed the buildings outside. This I began to unfold under her watchful eye. I laid it out over the floor just in front of her. Then I picked up the bucket, the handle creaking in the silent room, and tipped it upside-down, dumping the contents out into a pile. I backed away again.

Minutes passed in silence. Her eyes had, for the first time, left mine, and were instead on the gleaming wet heap of shells. Watching them fiercely, as though studying them, evaluating them. 

The dry rasp of an uncoiling tail could be heard in her dark corner. Then, with the speed of a viper, she sprung from the darkness, falling on the mussels to immediately devour them. I could hear the crack of shells in her hands, the monstrous snarl as she sucked the meat from their shattered exteriors. 

I stood transfixed at the edge of the room, as she tore through her meal, crunching shells between her teeth. I wondered, as she tossed some shards of broken shell aside, like the shattered remains of a delicate porcelain cup, whether it would sound the same when she crushed bone, and my arms folded around my still-aching ribs. 

She left not one shellfish untouched. Soon the creature laid down upon the remains of her makeshift picnic, her long, ink-black hair spilling over crushed shell and paint-stained cloth. 

The enormous tail seemed to fill the whole of the room, a blue-green serpent that spilled off the dropcloth onto the bare concrete. Her back was towards me as she curled up against her tail. How human it looked. The sharp shoulder blades, the curve of her spine. Would it also shimmer in the sun, as her tail did? Or was the pale flesh as smooth as a human's? 

I decided that if I wanted to find out, I might need more clams. 

When I returned with the first aid kit and the bucket refilled, the slight hunch of her shoulders was enough to tell me that she'd heard me coming. I took this to be a good sign, as sneaking up on her seemed a terrible idea. It was not until I set the noisy tin bucket down near her that she moved. One hand pressed to the floor, then the next. Fingers digging into the dropcloth, as if testing the strength of the very concrete beneath, bits of shell crunching beneath her palms. Her hair spilled like a veil over her face, so that I could see only a single eye staring out at me as she raised her head. 

A low, guttural sound that I could only assume to be a growl gently shook the air in warning. 

I took a step back, keeping the bucket between me and her, as I raised my free hand non-threateningly. The other still held the first aid kit. "Now, now. I'm not here to hurt you. I came to help. See?" Slowly, I lowered myself to the floor, her eye still trained on me. My voice still low and soothing. I reached into the bucket and pulled out another mussel to show her. "You'd like more of these, wouldn't you?" 

Her eye darted to my hand. It was blue, like her tail, and were it not for the predatorial intensity, could almost be called pretty. I thought of how easily she had shattered those shells and how much more easily she could crush my fingers. 

Slowly, deliberately, she reached out and plucked the mussel from my hand. 

She maintained eye contact with me as she brought it to her other hand and began working at the shell with her fingers. When the bivalve did not immediately give in to her attempts to pry it open, she brought it up to her mouth and tore at it with her teeth. It was such a human gesture, like a person struggling to open a bag of chips, that I nearly forgot the danger enough to chuckle. 

I set the first aid kit down and began to pull out what I would need. Gauze and antiseptic ointment were obvious, but I paused at the tape. Would adhesives work on a scaly tail? Were the scales delicate, easily torn by such a tape? Or would it be coated in a sort of mucus that would make the tape impossible to apply? Well, first I had to get close enough to worry about such a thing. 

She eyed me curiously as I moved, still working at her meal. She was less frantic now, her hunger after a day without food seemingly sated. 

I tried skirting around toward the tail.

Her entire form tensed. Were she in possession of fur like a dog, I would say that she bristled at my movement, a sharp hiss warning me. I could see knifelike points just visible behind her lips, which she drew back in a snarl. 

"Alright," I soothed. Shakily, I returned to where I had been. She watched me a moment longer before warily returning to her shell, eyes still glancing in my direction. This, at least, showed me that she had some measure of predictability to her. She did not lash out without reason. She had clear boundaries that I would have to navigate. 

I sat still for a long time, letting her fish more shells out of the bucket one by one and demolish them in front of me. She became bolder in her snacking, leaning closer to look into the bucket for the best ones and choosing carefully, rather than snatching them up. Eventually, when she leaned closer to me, it was not the bucket she inspected. She wanted to look into the first aid kit. 

"That's not food," I tried to explain. Her blue eyes surveyed the neutral plastic packaging anyway. Did she know it was not? Did it look like something familiar to her from deep below the water? I picked up a pack of gauze and held it up for her to see. "This is gauze. It's for cuts, and… oh, here." I tore the package open. She watched with fascination as I did. "Here, like this." I held the gauze pressed to my arm to mimic how it would be used. 

She reached for my hand. Briefly I considered pulling away, far away, to where she could not touch me at all. But her hand clasped around the back of mine, gently, and pulled it toward herself. I opened my hand so she could see the gauze resting in it. She ducked her head close, eyeing it with the scrutiny of a scientist. 

"You can touch it," I said dumbly, hardly believing that my fingers remained intact. "It's harmless, and we've got lots more."

Did she understand me? Her eyes glanced up, and then back down at the soft white square in my hand. She was balancing herself on her other hand, and so the one that held mine had to release it in order to move her fingers around and give the gauze a nudge. 

I suppose it must have felt strange to one who existed under the water. She brushed her fingertips over the dry cotton, marveling at the texture. "Is this all new to you? You can take it, if you like." 

She delicately plucked the square of gauze from my hand, and held it up to her face to smell it. How disappointing it must have smelled, like chemical sterility and plastic. It made me want to bring her flowers. 

I produced another sealed pack of gauze from the kit. "I want to use this to help you. Will you let me do that?" 

She glanced up at me, and I was unsure if she understood. 

"You were hurt, yesterday. I hurt you. I can use this to make it better."

It was too much, I think, to hope that this would be the moment that this sea creature would roll over to present to me her soft belly like a docile pet. Did I imagine that she would lie delicately in place while I tended to her wounds like the heroine of a Victorian romance novel? She moved, her tail coiling in on itself, the faint hiss of sandpaper-rough scales sliding along one another. She was rising. Her hands pushing her torso upright, her tail gathering beneath her. Her shoulders rose above mine, then further still, the expanse of her bare chest and stomach moving past my vision to tower over my head. Her tail held her aloft, and she stood over me, suddenly a giant where moments before she had seemed so delicate. I did not dare move, wondering if this would be the moment when she fell upon me and tore me apart like the mussels strewn over the floor. 

Then she gently fell back, draping herself over the workbench set against the wall. Her back resting against the small, dusty window, the length of her tail spilling over the edge to pool onto the floor. She watched me, expectantly. 

When I was certain I could stand without fainting, I tentatively got to my feet and gathered the first aid kit. I set it down on the table beside her. "Could you, uh, show me where you-- oh…" She had been hiding it before, with the way she laid upon the floor. Now I could see, close to what might have approximated a human thigh, the dark red break in her scales. It was then that I realized how beautiful the silver-blue scales looked, how alarming it was to see their neat pattern torn through. 

I had my basic first aid training. It was necessary, taking this job. The stories I have read about people being forced to administer their own emergency first aid on the job would make you shudder. That helped me, I think, approach the matter of patching up a sea creature's tail as calmly as one really could. 

I took out a pair of sterilized gloves. She wanted to see them. I let her have her own pair to inspect. That was how we proceeded. Every object I produced was a new curiosity to her. Something to touch, to smell, to test. 

"This will sting," I told her of the antiseptic. I put some on my own arm to show her it was harmless. She took my arm in both hands and pulled it to her face. Her nose wrinkled at the scent. 

That was the first time I laughed. "No, it doesn't smell great. That's how you know it works."

She looked unconvinced by that statement, pushing my arm away. The sting as I applied it to the wound made the entire length of her sharply recoil. I paused, looking up at her face. She was biting her lip, jagged teeth drawing a single bead of blood from them. How cruel, I thought, to have such soft-looking lips with those teeth. 

"I'm sorry. It will only hurt for a moment, I promise." 

She heaved out a puff of breath. There was determination in her eyes. She was preparing for me to continue. 

The end of her long tail squirmed and twisted on itself as I finished, but the rest of her did not move. "There. Done." I capped the antiseptic, hiding it away. 

Her eyes lit up in recognition when I took out more gauze and pressed it to the cut. She seemed pleased to see it in practice, this strangely soft and dry white square. I decided against using tape on the scales, and instead wound a cloth bandage around the tail to hold it in place. "There, you're done. You did so well."

There was a surge of movement in her tail, a wave that moved along its length until it lifted the rest of her up off the workbench. She "stood," insofar as a legless creature can, at least a foot above me, like a Roman column. And then she dropped forward onto me. Her arms around my shoulders, her salt-scented skin pressed into my face. 

I would like to tell you that I held her aloft easily, carried her like a bride across the lighthouse grounds to lay her gently upon my bed. Unfortunately I must inform you that I am not that sort of man. I managed to hold her, weighed down as she was by a tail that was at least twice as long as I was tall, for barely a moment before we both toppled backwards onto the pile of broken clam shells. 

If she was disappointed in my failure, she did not show it. She sat on top of me, her oilslick-black hair hanging down in a long curtain as she leaned over to look at my face. She inspected it as she had each thing in the first aid kit, brushing her fingers over my cheek, prodding at my chin. I felt hardly able to move as she did this, despite the pain of several jagged shells in my back. 

Some sort of bravery compelled me to reach up and touch my thumb to the cut on her lip. She did not shy away at my touch. I was right: they were soft.

A shrill ringing sounded from my other wrist. She startled at the alien sound, those soft lips curled back into a toothy snarl. 

"It's alright, it's alright." I rushed to silence my watch. It was digital, waterproof, and obnoxiously loud enough to interrupt me at whatever I was doing, whether cutting the grass outside or trying to catch a nap. For a job that required militant adherence to the time, it was indispensable. At this moment, I nearly considered throwing it into the ocean. 

She still glared warily at my wrist. "It's telling me I need to get to work, is all. Here--it's just buttons and numbers, nothing scary." I showed her the watch face, pressed a few buttons to make the same beeps. The fact that it responded to my touch got her interest. She leaned forward again, the tail that had nearly eased off my legs now rolling its full weight back onto them again. 

I groaned under the weight, my entire back half protesting at the sharp, jagged spikes of broken shell beneath it. "Okay, how about we trade? You give me back my legs and I'll let you play with this while I'm gone."

She tilted her head at the device. I took this as a yes, and slipped it off my wrist, pushing it into her greedy hands. "Just no eating it, please. I need it in one piece." 

She already had the watch held close to her face, squinting at it as she turned it around. It was left to me to extract myself from beneath her scaly heft. Shells popped and crunched beneath me as I pulled myself across the floor. The popping I heard when I groaned my way to my feet was likely my back. "Be right back," I grunted, trying to feel if I'd actually been stabbed by mussel shell or if I only felt like I had been. "Just need to… weather." 

When I left her, she was cautiously pressing a button. 

***

That night, my dreams were of endless waters lapping at my ankles. 

I awoke in the dark of early morning in a bedroom not my own. I stared up at the bare white ceiling, illuminated only by the half-moon outside my window. The faint breeze brought the heavy scent of brine through the outdated curtains, reminding me of where I was. Not in the small apartment I was used to. Not my childhood bedroom in my parents' suburban home. Here the rumble of traffic had been replaced by only the constant roar of the ocean, police sirens traded for the shrill cries of seagulls. It was my room, at least for the duration of my contract. I had almost grown used to the noise. Which was why, perhaps, I now noticed the distinctly different sounds from down the hall. A scrape. A crack. Every groggy nerve in my body snapped to attention. I cast frantically around the room for something with which to defend myself from--what? An intruder, out on a pile of rocks accessible only by boat? A raccoon, inexplicably far off the mainland? A ghost? Whatever it was, a loud pop sounded from somewhere in the cabin, too loud to have been a thing I imagined. Clad in nothing but my underwear, I grabbed a kitschy statuette of some other lighthouse off of a shelf to arm myself. Strange, how a room could become an alien world when in darkness. The strange silhouettes of furniture loomed in the living room, illuminated by moon and starlight through a window I saw no reason to draw curtains over for privacy when only the great expanse of the ocean's blackness could be seen from it. I was not looking at the view as I clutched the statuette in my hand, fumbling blindly towards the source of the noise. The kitchen. It was in the kitchen. I could feel my heart racing as I stepped toward the doorway, wondering whether it would not be better to simply lock myself in my bedroom until dawn. But the sound persisted. Scratching. Scraping. Crunching. Cracking. 

I raised the statuette in my hand, gripped so tight that it shook. I slowly reached out with the other to find the light switch on the wall. 

Light flooded the kitchen, and I screamed. The statuette clattered to the floor, the tacky lighthouse snapping in two. 

You ask why I would paint this unflattering portrait of myself. Standing in my kitchen at 4:00 in the morning, screaming and nearly naked. My hair, no doubt, an unkempt mess. Only because this is the only appropriate response a human could have at such an hour, upon being confronted with miles of serpentine tail wound around his kitchen. It coiled on counters and trailed over the floor, filling the space with scales that shimmered wetly in the moonlight. And there at the center of this slithering mass was the sea creature, carefully prying open a clam shell. 

She tilted her head up at me, quizzical at the noise I produced. Her hair clung to her face, slick with fresh seawater. Indeed, all of her was dripping wet, the laminate floor beneath her turned to one giant puddle. 

"Okay," I squeaked. "Okay, you're… in my home now. That's something. How did you…" I glanced up at the door, which opened directly from the kitchen. It hung wide open. "You can open doors. That's great."

She scooped up a handful of something and smoothly rose up on her tail until her face was level with mine. Then she held her hands out. 

I stared down at what she offered. My first instinct was to recoil at what looked like a handful of pink-grey blobs. But then I noticed the discarded shells on the floor, and realized what they were. "Are these… clams?" She gently pushed them towards me. 

There are some things you never expect to do in life, and one of them is to be standing in your kitchen with your hands cupped around a pile of freshly-shelled clam meat offered to you by a mermaid. I stared down at it in a daze. "Did you bring these for me?"

She smiled. There were so many teeth in that smile.

"Is this a thank you, or…?" I tried not to look down at the slimy cold meat in my hands. She waited expectantly. 

The polite thing to do, of course, would be to begin stuffing them into my mouth like popcorn. My stomach churned at the thought. I had eaten raw clams before, but they were served on a delicate bed of ice, with hot sauce and lemon wedges and little sprigs of parsley, and a large glass of white wine. Not as an oozing glob in my hands. 

"I… thank you. I'll just…" I moved around her, stepping over coils of tail. I shuddered when my bare feet stepped in icy saltwater puddles. I found a dish in the cupboard and dropped the contents of my hands into it. "I'll just save these for later." 

My hands were slimy now. I turned on the tap, waited for hot water to flow. 

She appeared at my shoulder. Her damp hair brushed against my arm, left an icy trail that made me shiver. She reached for the tap, her fingers trailing into the flowing water before recoiling at the touch of it. I put my own fingers under it to test. "Oh -- it's warm. Have you not felt warm water?" 

She gave me an affronted look. As though I dared to have water in my home that was incorrect. She tried touching the stream rushing from the tap again. Carefully. 

"It's not so bad," I reassured her. "I guess the Pacific doesn't heat up much around this part of the world, huh?"

I noticed, then, that the bandage I had so carefully applied the day before was sopping wet. "Oh. You went in the water to get these, didn't you? I should replace that."

She looked down at herself, fingers trailing the soaked gauze. It was like a sponge was strapped to her, dripping water uselessly down the length of her tail. 

Over in the engine room, she had seemed a monstrous thing. Yet it was not until she was in my home that I realized just how much of her there was. The tail was its own entity, filling hallways and winding about table legs. I somehow coaxed her onto the well-worn old couch in the living room, which was covered in knitted afghans to hide generations of coffee stains and cigarette burn marks from an era when people still smoked indoors. The tail managed to dislodge a number of knick-knacks, books, and a coffee mug in the process. She reacted with a hiss when I flicked on a lamp, the fins on her tail flaring out like a warning. 

"Yeah, that stings," I agreed, blinking myself at the intrusion of light. I left her there to retrieve the other first aid kit (one can never have too many around, when a hospital trip would require an airlift). On the way, I padded across the kitchen, skirting around saltwater puddles and discarded shells, to close the front door. I half-expected to find the door knob torn off, but it seemed to be intact after all. Of course she could figure out how a door worked, even if she'd never seen one before. She was a smart creature, an observant one. Someone who seemed to crave learning about any new thing placed before her. 

I returned to find her sprawled on her back, her head propped on the arm of the couch, pushed beneath the lamp to gaze directly up into it. Her hand resting carelessly across her pale ribs. Her tail spilling over the opposite arm to tumble onto the floor, trailing lazily across the carpet. The lamplight painted golden hues over her face and the curve of her shoulder. When her eyes moved to study whatever it was she saw in that 40 watt bulb, they glinted like no human eyes would. Like twin moons reflecting the sun. 

I hesitated in the doorway, wondering what it was that those mirrored eyes saw. If there were colors in this room that only she could see. But then she noticed me there, and the glint was gone as she tilted her head away from the light to look at me. Her hand reached for me.

It surprised me how readily I responded to that reaching hand. How nice it felt, when she took me by the wrist and pulled me closer. I sank to my knees beside her, this beautiful monster who looked at me like I was a treasure she meant to keep. She watched me replace the gauze as she had before, but the wariness had faded from her eyes. There was a fondness there now, as she tracked the movement of my hands. 

It occurred to me that there are animals in the world who exchange gifts as a form of courtship. Pretty rocks. Colorful shells. Food. 

It occurred to me that perhaps the clams strewn about my kitchen floor were not offered as a thank you, but as a request. 

When I had finished wrapping the fresh gauze over her cut, she took my wrist and again pulled me closer. 

Should I have wondered at the thrill she sent through me? Do terror and excitement lie so close to one another that one should so easily turn to the other? Or was it only the late hour, and the distant rumble of the ocean, and the calming warm light that made all fear give way to the softness in her eyes? 

I climbed into the nook between the back of the couch and her, my head nestled into her still-damp hair. Her body was cool despite the summer heat. Her scales rough against my legs. Dawn found me there, curled up in her arms, a length of serpentine tail coiled fondly around my ankle. 

***

There are only so many types of people who would willingly choose the job of a lighthouse keeper. The pay is not fantastic. The hours are abysmal. You are relegated to a remote corner of the world with only the endless roar of ocean for company. No wi-fi. Poor reception. Job expectations are a mix of physical and intellectual. Holidays come when relief workers are available. Most sane people would look at these conditions and determine that a cozy life near civilization is more suitable. 

But there are those who, for some reason, are drawn to these little towers of light on the edge of darkness. It is usually for one of two reasons: for the solitude, or for the romanticism of it all. 

I am sure you have guessed where I fit into these. Your letter may not have mentioned your being a fan, Dr. Chiba, but you can't have been completely oblivious when you wrote me. I did find it mixed in with my fan mail. Back then, no one had heard the name Zac Felde before. I was a nobody trapped in an artistic rut, languishing in a university program I didn't want, wasting away at a dead-end retail job to make rent. 

That probably sounds dramatic. I am a musician, after all. Drama is what we do. 

The keeper's cabin had a lived-in feel to it. Generations of keepers before me leaving their mark in the form of abandoned furniture and unwanted books. Threadbare old quilts, tacky landscape paintings, cracked mugs. Things that kept them comfortable through the solitary months, but did not feel worth hauling back out on the boat when it came time to leave. The closet even held old clothes, things I could raid when the autumn damp began to set in. Musty old sweaters and thick winter coats. Even a dress or two. Many married couples shared the job, standing together against the empty expanse of ocean. 

What actually secured my decision to move out to this little spit in the ocean was the upright piano against the wall. How much trouble it must have been for some intrepid keeper to haul it out here. What a sign of providence it seemed to me. Doesn't every artist wish for such purity of solitude to hone their craft? 

The dawn did not shine directly through the windows in the morning, as they faced the ocean to the west. It was the rosy pink sky turning to gold that woke me. That, and the blasted seagulls shouting their morning cries. 

She still slept. Her chest rising and falling gently beneath my cheek. Her face was soft in slumber. I noticed how dark her eyelashes were, how her lips were nicked with little healed-over cuts. It had not, until that moment, quite occurred to me that she could sleep. Nor how her sweet face would fascinate me in its contradictions, in how such a gentle expression could hide the fangs I knew were there. 

I checked my watch and found it would be beeping in five minutes. Better to rise now and turn it off than subject her to that dreaded noise. 

A small alcove in the cabin's living room was taken up by a cluttered desk facing a window. This was where the radio equipment sat, in easy reach of the cabin's occupant. It would not be the first morning that I would drag myself to the worn desk chair in nothing but underpants to make my abhorrently early first weather report of the day. 5:00 in the morning, and the temperature was 17.6 degrees celsius. Clear sky, wind speed 3 km/h, wind direction 22 degrees, smooth sea, low swell. A gentle summer morning. I recorded each number dutifully before firing up the radio and listing off the numbers aloud. 

She stirred at my voice. I turned to watch her as I finished my report. "Wind…" I started to say. She rolled languidly over on the couch, arms stretching up overhead, tail slowly spreading its coils over the floor. I tried to remember why I was holding a transceiver to my mouth. "Wind 22 degrees." Somewhere down the coast, there would be sailors planning their day based on my words. Some of them might have wondered why I stuttered that morning. 

Brewing that morning's coffee was a particularly treacherous endeavor. The kitchen floor was a minefield of broken shells and half-dried clam meat. There were streaks of salt where the water had dried, and puddles where it had not. The entire room smelled sickeningly of brine, which is -- contrary to many a romantic poem -- not a remotely pleasant smell early in the morning. Just in case my stomach was not already heaving, I had helpfully left an entire bowl of clam meat on the counter, just beside the coffee maker. 

I tossed the bowl's contents in the garbage and opened a window. I then decided that I was legally allowed to put off properly cleaning the rest until I'd at least had my coffee. 

When I returned, coffee cup in hand, I found her investigating the radio. Elbows on the desk to prop herself up, tail trailing across the carpeted floor. Her hair was like ink that had been poured down her back. Her scales seemed to shimmer in the morning light. She was holding the transceiver to her ear, like a beachcomber listening for the ocean in a shell. 

"Here. I'll show you." I moved beside her and flicked the receiver on. Static hissed from the speaker as I adjusted the dial, searching for voices. She tilted her head towards it, and I wondered how the world sounded to her, deep in the ocean. Did she ever hear other voices? Did the singing of whales call to her in the dark?

"Hold on. I have something better." I stepped over to the upright piano, setting my mug down on top of it, next to a truly atrocious bear figurine. 

There was something about old pianos, even upright ones like this, unimpressive in their blocky shapes and worn finish. The instrument of choice in church basements and elementary schools. The keys yellowed with age, faded rings from spilled beverages staining the wood. The bench I sat on did not match at all, the threadbare cushion on top worn to the point that stuffing peeked out of it. 

Still, my fingers found the keys, and a note rang out pure and true. Her head whipped around to see what had made such a sound. I, being the incredibly vain soul that I am, shuffled through the music sheets for one that was mostly made up of smudged pencil. This was where I spent my hours, when my maintenance work was done. Scribbling and erasing notes on a page, with nothing but the seagulls and the grumbling ocean outside to hear me play them again and again, refining and remaking the song without satisfaction. 

You no doubt know the name of this song now. Back then, it had no name, no lyrics. Nothing but a faint melody scribbled in pencil. 

I heard the dry slither of her movement across the carpet. It was a light song, a delicate one that plucked at high notes at first. She reached for my hand, ceasing the music, and pushed it aside to see the mechanism beneath my fingers. 

"Yes," I laughed. "It's the keys." She slid her hand over the white keys, testing their texture. They yielded at her touch, too gently to make noise. I let her experiment, figure out how hard she needed to press to receive her musical reward. In response, my other hand pressed the same note, two octaves lower. She grinned, all sharp fangs and delight.

When she was satisfied that she understood, she reached for my hand again and returned it to its original position. I let her move it where she wanted, amused at how even in this, she directed things to her preference. "Now you want me to play?" 

She sat back on her tail to watch my hands expectantly. No audience has ever been so intent on me before. I could do nothing but oblige. 

It was not how humans listen to a song, respectfully sitting still or bobbing along to the beat. She seemed to feel the music in a way I could not begin to appreciate. She shivered with the high notes, like they tickled along her flesh. She sighed into the low notes, like they were a depth drawing her in. She pressed herself into the side of the piano, resting her cheek upon the wood, and let the music reverberate through her. 

And then, she sang.

There are stories about sirens. How their voices drive a person delirious, cause sailors to plunge into the sea. Fairy tales. 

Have you ever stood beneath a church tower when the bells rang? Every chime such a powerful force that it reverberates through your body, and for a moment, the very world around you seems to shudder too. Every atom in your body, in the air, in the ground beneath your feet, jostling together, lurching drunkenly. The oscillation leaving you dizzy and unsettled, vibrating through your chest and your bones long after it has stopped. 

I don't know that I can describe the effect that her voice had on me any better than that. It was dizzying ecstasy, reverberations thrumming through my skull. I was the string pulled taut inside the piano's housing, shivering with every strike of the hammer. 

I think, perhaps, I blacked out. 

I think, perhaps, I did not mind when I woke to her gently stroking my hair. A nest of tail coiled all around me, supporting me in its strong grip. The scales were cool and smooth against my skin, almost metallic in their texture. I still sat on the piano bench, leaning into her arms while she sat… all around me. 

"Your song," I whispered, "sounds so sad."

Her hand stilled in the tangle of my long hair. It moved to alight on my chest. Her eyes contained in their depths all the oceans in the world. 

I touched the back of her hand, understanding. She was gesturing to me. "Mine too?" 

She went on gazing at me. Confirming the question. 

"I suppose it is." I had never meant it to be. Or rather, I had never meant for others to notice it. Perhaps I did not hide the truth of my feelings so well in the melody as I thought I did. Or perhaps sadness reaches for sadness, even across languages that contain no words. "We're so lucky, then, that they can accompany each other."

She lifted both her hands to cup my face and gently pressed her forehead to mine. The girl from the sea held me, her willing captive, and I had never been so happy. 

***

My daily tasks around the lighthouse continued, but my world had changed. She was there in my thoughts and in every room. Her breath hot on my neck in the mornings. Her eyes on me as I fixed the generator. Her hands plunging into the soft soil in my garden and coming up with a bright carrot. Her tail shimmering in the moonlight that filtered through old curtains as it moved to coil around her form. 

Before, I had relied on the periodic beeping of my watch to give my days structure, to insert clarity of purpose where longing for human contact might loom in my heart. It was easier to be alone when there was always something to do, always a set schedule to follow. Now I resented its constant intrusion. 

I wanted to spend my days braiding her hair in the sun, while she lounged on an old blanket and tried to make her fingers grasp a pen (how fascinated she was, by the way a mark could be made by such a thing upon any surface, including me). 

I wanted to lose myself in her voice while my fingers found their way across the piano keys all on their own, producing such haunting and strange music that I hesitated to write it down. 

I wanted to watch her wrinkle her nose at my coffee, nibble cautiously at steamed oysters, enthusiastically crunch unwashed carrots pulled straight out of the dirt. 

I wanted to wake up every morning surrounded by her, safely entangled in limbs and coils of tail and hair. 

I tried to find a name for her. Though she could vocalize, she only ever used her voice in wordless song. I could not tell whether she could not speak or would not, because she seemed to learn the meanings of the words I said quickly. When I asked her name, she simply pressed her hand to her chest. _Me,_ her gesture seemed to say. _I am me._ But I wondered if it was wrong to have no name for the person who I was falling so deeply in love with. I pulled up an alphabetical list and started from the top. Aada, Abbey, Adaline, Alexandria, Amalthea, Amy, Amphitrite… each too mundane or too pretentious or too… human. What name was there to describe the gossamer of her fins in the sunlight, or the haunting way she looked at me in the dark? After fruitlessly trying a few out, it became clear that no name I could speak could belong to her. She lightly patted my cheek when I slumped in defeat, consoling me and my ignorance. 

Her use of the cabin's bathtub was an adventure of its own. The idea of a vessel that could be filled with water any time she chose was highly appealing to her. But there was the matter of the tail, and how she could not fit all of it inside the tub at the same time. The effort of trying, of course, made an absolute lake of the bathroom floor, and sent shampoo and body wash bottles scattering. She was also slightly offended by hot water, and seemed to think, the first time I drew her a bath with the warm temperature that I would have preferred, that I was trying to steam her like another oyster. Yet she was intrigued when she saw me turn on the shower for myself, and shunted aside the curtain to join in on the experience. 

Needless to say, I kept a number of spare towels and buckets at the ready. 

It was around the wound that I first noticed something wrong. The cut itself was healing as it should, turning to a shallow pink welt that would fade soon enough into a scar. But once when I pulled away the gauze to change the dressing, a few shimmering flakes still clung to the white cotton like little jewels. I plucked one up and saw on my fingertip a perfectly-formed scale. It was so delicate on its own, clear and iridescent, blue-green when turned one way and red when turned another, like it had been cut out of a dragonfly wing. 

A few days later, I found more dotting the bedsheets like stars on the faded blue sky. When she saw me looking at them, she pulled me away from the bed, dragged me to the piano where she knew I could be distracted. 

But soon there were patches of pale skin where shimmering scales should have been. Soon she grew ashy and weak. Soon she no longer rose onto her tail to tower above me, but instead dragged herself with difficulty from one place to the next. 

The bathtub wasn't enough. The shellfish I brought her were not enough. This place was not enough for her. She had become a captive animal, and she would die without being released. 

I did not sleep that night. I held her in the darkness, while she stroked my hair and hummed a nameless song to me. 

In the morning, I carried her to my boat.

She lay in the bottom of the boat, watching me with mournful eyes as I rowed us out into the middle of the bay, to the same place I had found her only weeks before. When my hand stilled on the oar, she laid hers upon it. 

My eyes met hers. "I can't… I can't come with you."

She took my hand between both of hers. I realized then that I trusted her, even here, in the place where I thought she would take my life. 

I paused only long enough to remove my shoes. She was smooth grace as she slipped into the water. I was clumsy and hesitant, and gasping at the cold water. I hung off the side of the boat, fearful and nervous. 

Her hand closed around my arm. Somehow, my fear was gone. I released the boat. 

Her tail coiled around my legs, and she pulled me down into darkness. I felt the instinctual panic when the icy water swept over my head, and clung to her desperately, fingers digging into her arms. Her hands rose to cup my face, palm to cheek, and her tail unwound from around my legs. A few controlled flicks of her tail held us suspended in the endless blue-green expanse. She held me only by the gentle touch upon my cheeks. It was my grip on her arms that kept me tethered to her now, a grip that I could release at any moment and return to the surface. 

She leaned forward, pressed her forehead to mine. Then I heard her voice. 

All those songs she sang for me -- I thought they were wordless. I thought there was no meaning behind them. But now, beneath the ocean waves, I could hear the things she was saying to me. 

She sang of the lonely void stretching out around us. Of a pod or a tribe or a family that once migrated with the seasons. No more. Only her now, swimming the same paths her people had for countless generations. 

She sang of my beauty in the morning light. Hair like the sun. Eyes like fresh kelp. 

I was always alone. Surely lonely, she thought, like her. Surely, it would be no loss for me if I lost whatever life I had on land. 

It would have only hurt for a moment. 

She was sorry. I could feel her apology rippling through the water. She'd only wanted me to become like her. She could make me what she was, if I was willing. If I was willing to pay the price. To leave my current life. Let my human self die so that I may swim with her forever. Leave my dreams unachieved, my family devastated at my mysterious loss. 

I pulled her close to me, wrapped my arms around her. I wanted, so badly, to keep hanging on. I wanted, so badly, to tell her yes. 

A part of me is still down there, I think. Whispering a silent yes that is swallowed up by the ocean. I feel it tugging at me at night, pulling me down into deep waters. The ocean never quite stops roaring in my ears, no matter how many years pass. 

I couldn't do it. I couldn't give her the yes that we both wanted. 

She understood. Her lips pressed to mine one last time. She sang me a final song. One that had only one word. The thing I had dared to try to replace with something mundane and human. The name I had never heard her speak. 

There is one reason that I took your inquiry seriously, Dr. Chiba. You asked about her teeth. For all the nutbar fanmail I receive, all the odd theories about my song, all the jokes about my mythical mystery girl, none have ever asked whether she had particularly sharp teeth. What an oddly specific thing to ask, unless you are one who already knows what those teeth are like.

That was her final parting gift for me. Her mark left upon me in the form of a deep bite into the tenderest part of my shoulder. I still run my fingers over the scar when I am alone, and wonder if she would still recognize her claim over me all these years later. 

You say your wife was the one who found my People Magazine interview where I dropped hints about the love who left me for the sea. I wonder who it was who left you or your wife standing on the shore. I wonder if you ever felt the bite of those teeth. I wonder if the sky wept for you, if the sea roared in protest, as the thing you loved, that lonely creature with eyes like mirrors, disappeared beneath the surface. Did you weep too?

Do you hear it, in the song I'm so known for? It runs in the undercurrents beneath the melody. A slow throb, like a sonar pulse. Steady and true, like a beacon flashing in the fog. Her name, her name, her name.

I hope I got the inflection right. 

I cannot explain why so much passed between us before I rose to the surface again, gasping and shuddering against the biting air. I cannot hold my breath that long. That, like the storm that suddenly descended overhead, is a mystery I will never unravel. 

When I pulled myself onto the little dock below the lighthouse, I remained there for several minutes, watching the sea rage and swell, feeling the rain pelt my skin and the heated throb of pain in my bleeding shoulder. I watched for her, but she never surfaced. 

When the storm faded and the waves calmed, I wept. I knew it meant that she had gone. 

I put in my resignation soon after, quitting before my contract was up and fleeing to my parents' quiet inland home. Now I play sold out stadiums and drink champagne with celebrities I grew up admiring. I'm known for the strange complexities of my music, none knowing how much of it comes from her. In my quieter moments, alone in a dark hotel room in a strange city, I wish I could return to the lighthouse, to hear the cry of seagulls and feel her cold hand on mine. Maybe someday, when my career has run its course, I will return there and wait for her. I will sit at the end of the dock just as I did on that final day, and sing her name until my voice is raw. 

I hope this letter brings you whatever satisfaction you seek, Dr. Chiba. But I feel that perhaps, if you have loved and lost a creature of the sea as I have, that there is no satisfaction that you will find. Her mark on me has not faded, and I am haunted by her memory. Perhaps there is solace in knowing there are others like her, and others like me. 

Yours,  
Zac Felde


End file.
